The Innocents - Lisa's Review

So, we travel back in time again for 'The Innocents'.  Right back to the early 60's.  I will admit, since I started having to watch particular movies for review, there have been some old movies that I have enjoyed.  Movies that I otherwise would never have chosen to see.  This movie however is most definitely not in that category.

There isn't much to the movie plot wise.  A young attractive lady called Miss Giddens (played by Deborah Kerr no less) is hired to become governess to 2 young children.  They are orphans and are under the care of their uncle who doesn't want to be bothered by them.  He is a very affluent man so he basically throws money at the situation to make it go away.  He hires Miss Giddens, who admits to having no experience whatsoever, seemingly purely based on her looks.  When she arrives at the childrens home, she makes a friend in the housekeeper Mrs Grose and loves Flora, the little girl she is to care for.  The little boy Miles is at boarding school so we don't see him until a bit later in the movie.

Miss Giddens is under the impression she is going to love her job, but she starts to see people who then turn out not to be there.  When Miles arrives home from school, things start to take an unpleasant turn with more strange happenings and some very odd behaviour from the children.  Mrs Grose doesn't seem to want to answer the questions Miss Giddens puts to her and almost warns her not to delve any deeper.  She knows something is very wrong with the children and the house.  This is pretty much it apart from giving away what was going on.
So, what did I think?  It was terrible!!! Boring, dull, slow and with characters that I didn't only not engage with, but I actually disliked most of them.  The clipped voices are horrible and the acting is pretty atrocious for a lot of the movie.  There were a couple of clips that were quite creepy (but not good creepy.... creepy as in WHY?)

Why it's on the TimeOut list as high as it is and why it supposedly inspired Kate Bush to write 'The Infants Kiss' is anyones guess.    The one and only Guillermo Del Toro apparently has this movie in his top 6 scary movies!!!  What on earth were these people watching???  I'm going to go right ahead and suggest you AVOID this movie.